Page 169

Her expression changed.

“That can’t be right.”

“No.”

She leaned closer.

Too close.

The heat of her shoulder registered before I could stop myself from noticing.

Her finger moved to the timestamp. “The mission existed before the theft.”

“Six hours before.”

She stared at the screen, then moved down the list herself.

The threat assessment labeling her a flight risk had been authored forty-three minutes before she left central Zunator. The hostile-transfer flag appeared before any outgoing communication from her credentials. The copied-data accusation existed before Sera’n revoked her access.

Talia slowly straightened.

“They didn’t react to anything I did.”

“No.”

Her eyes moved across the chronology again, colder now.

“They decided I was guilty first. Then made the records fit.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me. “They framed me.”

“Someone constructed the threat narrative before the underlying events existed.”

Her stare flattened.

“That is an extremely Veyr way to say they framed me.”

I almost argued. Did not.

“Yes.”

The room went quiet.

She rested one hand against the table.

“Why?”

I had no answer.

That made the anger worse.

I stripped away the visible authorizations and opened the mission shell beneath them. Different layers. Different permissions. Some metadata had been rewritten cleanly. Other pieces had been copied forward from older templates. Whoever built the packet had been good. Just not good enough.

They had assumed no field operative would audit the chronology. Why would we?

Mission packets arrived complete. Threat classifications were established before deployment. Supporting intelligence had already been evaluated by people with access we did not possess.